This post has been contributed by a third party. The opinions, facts and any media content here are presented solely by the author, and The Times of Israel assumes no responsibility for them. In case of abuse, report this post.

The Noose Has Loosened

Blogger

Mike Lumish
Mike Lumish is a PhD in American history from the Pennsylvania State University and has taught at PSU, San Francisco
… [More]State University, and the City College of San Francisco. He regularly publishes on the Arab-Israel conflict at the Times of Israel and at his own blog, Israel Thrives (http://israel-thrives.blogspot.com/). He has in recent years given conference papers on American cultural and intellectual history at The International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences in Dublin, Ireland, as well as at the Western Historical Association in Phoenix, Arizona and the American Cultural Association in New Orleans, Louisiana. Lumish is also the founding editor of the scholarly on-line discussion forum H-1960s. He can be contacted at mike.lumish@gmail.com. [Less]

The failure of the Muslim Brotherhood to maintain power in Egypt, despite backing from United States President Barack Obama, may have averted disaster. The so-called “Arab Spring,” which brought the Brotherhood into power in Egypt, is the rise of the movement for Sharia – which is the movement for Muslim supremacism – throughout the Middle East.

This is a movement that persecutes women, that persecutes Gay people, and that persecutes Jews.

Political Islam is the Ku Klux Klan on steroids.

While American “progressives” bitch and moan and cry about the Tea Party, who want smaller government in the United States, the Brotherhood was preventing Egyptian Christians from voting at the point of a rifle and their Salafist co-ideologues were burning down churches.

And, yet, Obama said not a word.

Why any president of the United States would support such a movement is beyond me. That Obama did support the Muslim Brotherhood is now a matter of public record. But the failure of the Brotherhood in Egypt speaks well for the character of the Egyptians and demonstrates at least a glimmer of hope because it was a major blow to the rise of political Islam throughout the region. The Egyptian military, furthermore, regained power in what was unquestionably a coup d’état with the clear backing of a large percentage of the Egyptian population.

One thing that people need to understand is that we are allowed to take sides. As a tiny persecuted minority, the Jewish people have an interest in not seeing anti-Jewish fascists come to power, even if they do so by democratic means. The Nazis, of course, came to power by the ballot. Just because Islamic theocrats, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, come to power through democratic means it does not mean that either Jewish people, or western secularists, should celebrate such a thing as the great up-welling of Arab democracy.

It wasn’t. The Sharia may come to power by walking through a democratic door, but by its very principles it must slam that door behind it. No government can be both democratic and based upon Sharia for long because Sharia is an anti-democratic legal and political system.

Now it should be noted, as the Brotherhood was taken down in Egypt, that Egypt is now engaged in significant fighting with Jihadis in the Sinai. The true hard-core Salafists operating in the area were hardly friends with the Brotherhood, either, but they shared the same ultimate goal. They both wanted to impose oppression on the rest of us via Sharia-based governments.

The Egyptian military government, and an important proportion of the Egyptian people, have no intention of living under the oppressive rules of formal Islamic law, al-Sharia, particularly given the fact that the Brotherhood was incapable of providing basic services and a stable economy. Thus the Muslim Brotherhood was overthrown, Muhammed Morsi was taken into custody, and Egypt returns to something comparable to the status quo ante.

As an American I would much preferred if the “Arab Spring” had actually represented the rise of liberal democracy in the Middle East. When we first started hearing about the rise of the “Arab Spring” we were told that these were young, secular-minded “facebook kids” who represented the future of a liberal and democratic Egyptian state. That was nonsense. It was never the case and those who told us it was should come clean with their mistakes, however well-intended. What the “Arab Spring” really represented was the rise of a particularly ugly form of autocratic Muslim theocracy. That it was supported by the United States government is simply unfathomable and unconscionable.

With the fall of the Brotherhood in Egypt, however, things look considerably brighter. It’s impossible to know what would have happened with a Brotherhood-dominated Egypt going forward, but one thing is certain, with the help of Barack Obama an Islamist noose was tightening around the necks of the tiny Jewish minority in the Middle East and now that noose has loosened.

To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.

By signing up, you agree to our
terms
You hereby accept The Times of Israel Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, and you agree to receive the latest news & offers from The Times of Israel and its partners or ad sponsors.